Newtown--Workers from L.R.M. Landscapers shovel snow off the small plaza downtown, that until several weeks ago was inundated with thousands of stuffed animals, flowers and candles remembering the Sandy Hook shooting victims. Photo-Peter Casolino 1/16/13

NEWTOWN -- Just more than a month after the molten anguish of 26 senseless deaths emanated from Sandy Hook Elementary School and spread worldwide, the sales display of St. Jude and "Divine Child Jesus" guardian angel memorial candles at the local Walgreens remains.

But while they once were stacked high in a display at the front of the store, at a time when mountainous memorials were sprouting all over town, the green, white and pink candles - $1.99 each, or three for $5 - now are on an end cap at the back of the store.

Five weeks after a troubled local young man killed his mother as she lay in bed, then drove to the school, shot his way in and killed 20 first-graders and six staff members, things are finally starting to move toward "normal" in Newtown.

But it's not the same "normal" it was before.

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Post-tragedy Newtown is a town where people have had their previous bubbles of safety and security shattered, but where, by all accounts, people are now more caring and more deeply spiritual.

And you don't have to go too far to find that out.

"Everything's completely different," said Zack Pollack, a junior at Newtown High School -- and former Newtown Elementary School student -- who works as a clerk at the Walgreens Pharmacy at South Main Street and Mile Hill Road.

"I still can't pay attention in school," he said. The high school still has grief counselors available and many students have gone to them, he said.

"I think this town is going to be permanently changed because of this," Pollack said. "It'll never just go away."

But some of the changes wrought by the excruciating events of Dec. 14 are positive, he said.

"If anything, people have grown closer," Pollack said, expressing a thought echoed by nearly every Newtown resident contacted for this story.

Some in Newtown are haunted by the thought that for many people all over the country and the world, "Newtown" and "Sandy Hook" now have become synonymous with a horrible tragedy.

But over at Flagpole Realty, where agent Wendy Margulies continues trying to sell Newtown even as she mourns the death of little Caroline Previdi, 7, a close family friend, inquiries actually have been up compared to most winters.

"It's been busier than most years" during the slow period that generally begins after Thanksgiving and continues until winter begins to fade into spring, Margulies said. "Not 'crazy busy,' but I've been getting e-mails from all over the country."

For Margulies, who began to cry a couple of times as she spoke to a reporter, the aftermath has been difficult. "It's very close to home," she said. Newtown "is a town, but it's a family -- and that's not going to change."

If anything's different, "I think people realize it more," said Margulies, a former nurse who grew up in Westport but has lived in Newtown with her surgeon husband for years.

She cherishes the fact that while the close-knit, caring quality she remembers from when she was a child in Westport has faded in her former home, it continues to thrive here.

One thing that's different is that while people may have had a general sense of that before, "now they REALLY know it," she said, "and we will survive."

For the town itself, which was inundated with mountains of teddy bears and tens of thousands of pieces of mail -- many containing checks -- since the shootings, the "new normal" includes a special Parks & Recreation Commission subcommitee to figure out what best to do with all of those gifts.

Most of the makeshift memorials now are gone -- carted off by public works crews between Christmas and New Year's Day. The tens of thousands of teddy bears sent to Newtown throughout the second half of December are in storage as the town begins to think about how they might be incorportated into a more permanent memorial.

At the sub-committee's second meeting on Tuesday, members clearly were grappling with how best to handle all the gifts that need to be catalogued, sorted, documented and channeled; the performance and fundraising offers -- not all of which Newtown is in a position to accomodate -- and all the other new challenges Newtown didn't face prior to Dec. 14.

Among other things, they're looking to Littleton, Colo., and what that community did in the wake of the Columbine shootings.

"I think a lot of people have repurposed themselves" since the shootings, "working on issues that they never thought about before," said Richard Boritz, a member of the Park-Rec Commission who is chairman of the new Memorial Gifts Ad Hoc Sub-Committee.

Over at the Sandy Hook Diner on lower Church Hill Road, a local morning and lunchtime meeting place since the Great Depression, co-owner Cliff Rothe thinks the tragedy has forged unity.

"It was a close community to begin with," and in the wake of the worst thing that's ever happened here, "it's just that much closer," said Rothe, whose diner sports both "We Are Sandy Hook -- We Choose Love" and "We Only Accept Cash and Local Checks" signs.

In a town that, more than most, is an amalgam of distinct smaller communities -- where people often say they're from Sandy Hook, Hawleyville, Bottsford or Dodgingtown, rather than Newtown -- "this tragedy pulled all those five things together," he said.

"Because I don't care what part you live in -- everybody knew someone who went to that school."

Rothe, who met media members from as far away as Brazil, Argentina and England in the days following the shootings - and had national media satellite trucks in his parking lot at one point, with his permission - said that for the most part, he had no problem with the way they handled what happened.

But he's still glad to see the traffic and the crowds thin so its easier for his customers to get in.

Rothe's one pet peeve through all this has been how many times he's seen news stories name the man he'll refer to only as "the shooter," while writing off all the victims as a number rather than as follows:

Nevertheless, she feels that as a waitress in a public gathering place, it's her duty to be as cheerful and positive as she can.

Like Gillette, First Selectwoman Patricia Llodra has a civic duty -- and she's seen plenty of change since Dec. 14.

Llodra, a Republican former school principal, along with Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson has been one of the most public faces of post-tragedy Newtown.

Her version of "normal," besides budget meetings and the routine business of running a town now includes attending meetings with visiting dignitaries like former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and flying to Washington, D.C., earlier this week to stand beside Democratic President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden as they unviled the changes they want to see to address gun violence.

But following what she called "a life-changing event for many people," Llodra sees broader changes that apply to everyone in Newtown.

"Our sense of safety, our sense of security has been questioned" and people have to cope with the fact "that we don't feel as safe as we did before," she said.

In the past, if something horrible happened somewhere, "I think we would have felt a little dismissive," she said. "Now that is not the case."

But "I think that we will find our center again," she said.

Llodra sees her primary job in post-tragedy Newtown as answering a couple of questions, including, "When can we have a new school school so we can bring our kids back home" (from their interim school in Monroe), and, right behind it, how to go about creating a permanent memorial to the people who were lost, she said.

But while the community is dealing with new questions and issues, "I think this has always been a wonderful community" and "I think we're not different from the way were were before Dec. 14," Llodra said.